The elections are over, and still each side claims a majority. It will turn out probably that the Government have about 270 thick and thin men. Since the Lancashire election, the Whigs have certainly not been so elated, though they still expect to succeed. They begin with the Speakership, and put up Abercromby, who is probably the best candidate they could select; he is a dull, grave man, sensible and hard-headed I fancy, but it has always been matter of astonishment to me that they should make so much of him as they do. The Duke of Wellington is constantly regretting that he did not abstain from taking office, as he wished to do, and I hear that Peel now thinks it would have been better: but he thinks so because he fancies that Stanley would have joined if the Duke had not been there, which is after all very doubtful. Stanley has preserved the strictest neutrality through the late contest, and been very guarded and cautious in his language--so much so, that the Whigs think he will vote for Abercromby against Manners Sutton, which I don't believe. The Church Reform is in active preparation; I know nothing of its details. Pozzo di Borgo is coming here, and the Emperor sends him partly to save time and, Madame de Lieven writes me word, 'to prove his goodwill, by sending his ablest and most confidential diplomatist.' Old Talleyrand would very likely have been glad enough to come back too (while the Duke is in office), but he is gone to Richecote. A great mystery is still made about the Queen's _grossesse_; the medical men believe it, though they think it no certainty. February 8th, 1834 {p.201} On Monday last we had the Sheriffs' dinner at Lord Rosslyn's,[7] where I met for the first time all the new men. Murray did not come, for since his defeat in Perthshire he no longer considers himself of the Cabinet. Before dinner Peel told me he had offered the vacant Lordship of the Treasury to Charles Canning,[8] in a letter to Lady Canning, saying it would give him great pleasure to introduce her son into public life, and that he should be glad to treat him with confidence, and do all that lay in him to promote his success. Lady Canning wrote a very gracious answer, saying that she preferred his being in Parliament some time before he took office, but neither he nor she was indisposed to support him and his Government. At this dinner the Duke talked to me about Spain, and said that the affair at the Post Office at Madrid, in which Canterac was killed, was the most lamentable thing that had happened, and the most discreditable to the Government; that if the Carlists did not rise upon it all over Spain, it was clear there were none; that it was a most extraordinary war, in which the Carlists had the superiority in the field, but possessed no fortified and even no open town; and that, notwithstanding all the plunder and devastation incidental to such a state of things, all the farmers in the disturbed provinces regularly paid their rents.